Chapter 9 #2
My mother wasn’t exactly maternal. Maybe my older brother had grown up with a different woman, someone actually excited to have a baby in the house, but my only recollection of my mother was someone cold and distant, doing the bare minimum to stay engaged.
The first time I stayed at camp without her, I would get up every morning and tiptoe through Sue and Randy’s house and make myself a bowl of cereal.
I’d silently eat and clean up without being noticed, exactly as I would at home.
One morning Sue stopped me and asked why she needed to sneak around.
I was caught off guard, terrified I’d be in trouble for satiating my needs, something I’d been all too familiar with.
Was it not normal to crumple yourself into a tiny invisible ball that floated around without sound?
I had assumed that children were supposed to be like tiny ghosts, flitting around and avoiding causing any more damage than they already had.
I didn’t want to be a bother, because I couldn’t be a bother.
Sue furrowed her brow, I braced for impact, the hurtling of chilly words that would strike me down.
Instead she turned into the pantry and retrieved flour, sugar, and everything else that would make a proper breakfast. From that day on Sue made me an exquisite meal each morning, and showed me how to make myself something more than a bowl of cereal.
I didn’t realize love was a verb until Sue showed me.
“What’s on the agenda today for you two?” Sue cheekily asked in between bites. Evan and I stared at our respective plates, wide-eyed.
The two cowboys would have a standoff, we’d flutter our fingers over the holsters of our guns in wait for the other to break and draw their weapon.
“I’m not sure what Dani had in mind.” Evan looked across the table at me, he’d volleyed the ball into my court.
He was gently coercing me into control, maybe even nudging me a step towards admitting that we unintentionally shared a best last night.
I was trying to avoid his stinging eye contact.
I could hardly think beyond the next five minutes.
“Well, I was going to take it pretty easy today and hang around camp,” truthfully I wanted to lay on my bed and stare at the shapes in the walls, “but if there’s something you want to do and you need someone to show you—” I overcorrected, as if to prove to Sue I was still earning my place here for the week.
If he jumped at the opportunity, I could muddle through another hike or canoe around the lake.
I could package away the parts of myself that needed to understand what had unfolded last night and unbox them later.
“No, no that wasn’t what I was implying.” Evan was a little uneasy at the offer.
I tried reading his mind. What do you want? I tried to subliminally ask him.
“Okay,” I replied quietly, “sorry.” The apology wasn’t intentional, a knee jerk reaction that slipped through.
He lowered his brows, contemplating. “A ‘chill day’ sounds nice,” he tried to salvage the awkwardness.
Neither of us had a course of action for where to go from here.
Sue managed to diffuse the discomfort, she always seems to find a way to.
She began explaining, in detail, everything Evan needed to know about kayaks, canoes, life jackets, paddles, and the like—just in case he wanted to participate in boating related activities today.
He listened intently, the charm snapped back on without a misstep.
“I feel bad, but I’m definitely not kayaking or canoeing today,” he said as we walked out of the house simultaneously.
Being so in sync was starting to be grating.
“No? But when else will you be able to use the knowledge of what angle to paddle at to move the quickest?” I chided, keeping my thoughts at bay.
Evan laughed. He had a real, hearty, deep laugh when he meant it. It was vastly different from the polite chuckles I had heard in interviews or for promotional content. Another secret I could hold close to my chest.
I attempted to pick up my pace to get slightly ahead of him, his longer stride managed to keep up without issue. I couldn’t run from him.
Neither of us had anywhere to go in particular.
As Sue was discussing the basics of kayaking I fantasized about a day where I could switch into a swimsuit and lay out on the dock alone for hours.
But so long as Evan was beside me—and he certainly wasn’t going anywhere—those fantasies wouldn’t be realized.
Evan stopped abruptly, I maintained my pace, stepping over a root.
Five fingers hesitantly wrapped around my arm.
My breath hitched. Everything stopped. I turned towards him, concern flashing in those steely blue eyes of his.
The distance between us disappeared with Evan’s long stride.
One step is all it took to close the gap.
“We’ve been strangers who have known each other for roughly forty five hours now, is that ‘bring up what happened last night’ territory? ” he asked softly.
Apparently sleeping dogs couldn’t be left to lie.
“What exactly happened last night?” I mused. I truthfully didn’t know. I didn’t know what was fact or fiction, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that I’d written my own self-insert fanfic while sleeping. My brain had conjured far worse before.
Evan studied my face and released his grip, attempting to catch onto any cues that we’d both lived the same thing. We stood face to face, neither speaking, waiting for the other to admit what happened first.
“In your cabin…” He began to speak.
I folded my arms in front of myself to cover up the goosebumps that had sprouted from his grasp, “I remember you and I were waiting for a squirrel to leave, or did I make that up?”
“You did not,” Evan spoke carefully, holding his breath waiting for the mutual realization, “there was in fact a flying squirrel in your cabin.”
“Right, and I’m assuming it left, and we returned to our respective cabins, right?”
The truth was the unfavorable of the outcomes here. I’d conjure up new fiction to take its place instead. An imaginary tale where we didn’t share my bed.
“I think you know what happened—” he picked at the skin on his thumb.
“It was really late, I was overtired.”
“Right, right.”
I had to leave before reality crept in. It was too bizarre for my mind to wrap itself around.
My footsteps picked up again, head pounding, fingers trembling, weirdness seeping out through each of my pores. I swear I could smell my stress.
“Dani, wait!” Evan called out to me firmly, not in his “aw shucks” boyish manner.
My head whipped around, I felt my eyes widen like they had when we first met. I still wasn’t used to him calling for me by name. We were further apart now, one of my feet was balanced atop a large rock jutting up from the ground. I wanted to grab the tree beside me to steady myself.
“I think you know what I’m about to say,” his gaze was unbreakable.
“That you spent the night?” As I spoke a fear bubbled up that I did in fact imagine such a bizarre scenario and was now speaking my fantasy out loud.
From his reaction I couldn’t tell if he was surprised I said the truth aloud or freaked out that I’d made the situation up.
“I don’t want you to think I was trying to do anything last night, that’s not like me,” he replied a few beats after.
That was a possibility?
Moreso, he actually thought I’d assume that about him?
The world where Evan used sharing my bed as an excuse to get close to me was in a galaxy so far away it would take a million lightyears to get there.
If anything I’m the weird one in his eyes, using an imaginary flying squirrel to coax him into my cabin.
There was still the matter of what happened on the dock. I wouldn’t think of that. I wouldn’t think of anything relating to him and his callused fingers brushing against mine.
“Oh god no, I didn’t think there were any ulterior motives,” I waved my hands dismissively.
He sighed audibly. “Okay. Good.” He stood still for a moment and anxiously scratched behind his head, “after I stupidly tried to hold your hand I didn’t want you to think my staying in your bed was me trying to…you know.”
Why was he so nervous? I was flattered, don’t get me wrong, but in what universe would Evan Fucking McLeod be all sheepish and shy when talking to someone like me.
“Yeah, for sure,” I chuckled nervously in kind. “You’re good, seriously.”
We were acting like two high school freshmen who were sitting beneath the bleachers unsure what to do next.
Silence hung between us, growing heavy like a fog after a storm.
“So, for reference I was going to spend most of my day today reading,” I told him, easing the conversation away from whatever that last exchange was. “If kayaking isn’t your passion you could always go for a swim or hike one of the easier mountains.”
In the fantasy I’d created for this day I’d crack into my pile of books that were in need of being read.
And then maybe eat some fresh fruit while staring at the water.
If I felt a little wild, I could go for a quick swim or take a kayak out.
Doing nothing of importance was a skill that I had taught myself how to master when I was at camp.
A contradiction to everything about my life outside of here.
“Right, your radium poisoning book. I can’t believe I didn’t think to bring anything besides some spec scripts I’m actively trying to avoid reading.”
Of course, of course he’d have actor things to do. There was still that divide between us.
“I have multiple books,” I blurted out. “You could definitely borrow one. Sue might even have some you could look through.”
Of course of these “multiple” books, two were romance novels, one was true crime, and the final was the brick of historical nonfiction that I was around a third of the way through.